


In Simple Pairs We Dance As One

by khazadspoon



Category: Black Sails
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Slow Burn, bi James, commission, flinthamiltons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-12 01:29:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15328713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khazadspoon/pseuds/khazadspoon
Summary: They were introduced at a ball in Midwinter of 1694 as Lord Thomas Hamilton, son of the Lord Alfred Hamilton, and the Honourable Miranda Barlow, daughter of the Viscount John Barlow. Thomas fell in love with her almost instantly as he gazed upon her.-----From the start of their marriage to James' departure to Nassau for three months - the slow burn romance.





	In Simple Pairs We Dance As One

They were introduced at a ball in Midwinter of 1694 as Lord Thomas Hamilton, son of the Lord Alfred Hamilton, and the Honourable Miranda Barlow, daughter of the Viscount John Barlow. Thomas fell in love with her almost instantly as he gazed upon her.

The dress was a soft blue hue, cinched tight at the waist and billowing out in wide skirts ending in white ruffles that swept along the floor. The skin of her neck and the tops of her breasts was pale like snow with just a hint of bright flush from wine and laughter. She held her gloved hand out for him to kiss, and he bent low to press his lips to her knuckles. Her smile was knowing as he lifted his eyes to her.

“My lord,” she said in a soft, low voice.

“My lady,” he replied just as softly, a smile playing over his lips.

Arm in arm they walked around the room, her chaperone not far behind, and propriety was soon lost to the sound and bustle of the crowd. Miranda, and she insisted on the familiar, asked him impertinent questions about his time at court and the goings on of young men with too much money and not enough to do. He laughed, bright and honest at her forthrightness.

“Do you think so little of us lordlings?” He asked, looking down at her over a glass of too-sweet wine.

Miranda lifted one dark brown and tittered. “Of course not, dear Thomas,” she said with false sympathy, “never think it. I just wonder what it is you do all day besides drink and hunt.”

Thomas scoffed at the idea. “I assure you, dear lady, I do not hunt. Such things are the pursuits of less civilised folk, are they not?”

“And you consider yourself civilised?” She retorted with a more stern look. He felt admonished, and deservedly so.

“I… I try, but I do not think my civility above any other man’s. Or woman’s.”

They danced and laughed, her dark hair falling in ringlets around her pretty face as they spun around one another. Thomas thought of the volta’s Queen Elizabeth so enjoyed and wondered if Miranda enjoyed them too. Though he had little interest in the physicality of women beyond the aesthetic, he wondered if Miranda was as brazen in her private life as her public one.

In the following weeks their parents secured the match, would have with or without their approval, and Thomas’ mother declared her joy at his wishes to marry the maiden. Her family, though not as well rooted in history as their own, was of honest and well-bred stock. Even his father approved of them, and that was high praise indeed.

They were to be married in the summer of 1695 at St Giles. Just three weeks before the ceremony, during one of the few moments alone they were afforded, Miranda cornered him in a quiet parlour.

“Thomas, my dear Thomas…” She said softly, her hands rising to rest on his chest. “I wish nothing but honesty between us.”

His heart beat wildly in his chest and threatened to burst forth from within. Sweat beaded on his skin, he could feel it on the back of his neck and on his palms. “Of course,” he said shortly.

“You have paid little attention to my more… obvious advances. I have spent many hours trying to learn what it is will attract you to more than just my mind and my hand in marriage, and I have come up short,” she tilted her head and looked up at him, her dark eyes like pools of deep tar, waiting to draw him in and trap him gladly in their depths. “But just this Tuesday I witnessed something truly revealing.”

His throat went dry. Could she mean-?

“The footman is indeed a pretty thing,” she said, lips curving into a smile that wasn’t entirely happy, “I doubt he would say no to your advances, even if he would to mine.”

“Miranda, I’m sure I don’t-”

Her smile fell and her hands became fists. “Don’t insult me by claiming innocence. You are a good and kind man, Thomas, and I want nothing more than to marry you and be your wife. But I know, I have seen how you look at me compared to the men in your life.”

Even as bile rose in his throat, even as tears filled his eyes and threatened to spill down his cheeks, he held her gaze. Her hand reached up and cupped his cheek. “I love you, Thomas, all of you. Society may say otherwise, but I will block their scorn with my love. Do not hide this from me, not when there are precious few people you can reveal this part of yourself to. If I am to be your wife, the only demand I will make is for your honesty.”

The frankness in her tone was outweighed by the kindness and unerring understanding. He wept, face pressed to the slender curve of her neck, like a child reunited with his mother after a sudden and unexpected absence. Miranda held him gently and hushed him, kissed his cheeks even as the tears still flowed. When he was calm and the flush had faded from his skin, she took his hand and led him to the main room for the day to continue.

—

The wedding was as lavish as any that year. London was filled with mutterings of the latest love match and the loss of yet another eligible bachelor to an undeserving woman. Miranda was not seen as worthy of a husband of Thomas’ stature and breeding. Though he said so to any who would listen, still the gossips did their cruel work. And shockingly in the eyes of the law, they did not consummate their marriage that night. Instead, they stayed up early into the next morning and devised a plan - their names and reputations would protect them only so far, and an intellectual conversation would stimulate them only so much. So, with some tense words and uncomfortable truths, they came to an agreement. An accord.

Miranda was free to take lovers as she wished, as long as she was discreet and careful for her own sake. Thomas could visit molly houses and take lovers if and when he found opportunity. If desire took them by surprise, they would be intimate with one another without regret or shame. Miranda kissed him, and he kissed her with joy and happiness.

The next ten years were happy ones. Though as with all relationships there were difficulties and minor scandals to be endured. Miranda was seen with paramours at balls and dinners, though never in any state of undress, and the town began to whisper of her being unfaithful. Thomas protected her and fought against the rumours. They came and went, as all rumours did, and Thomas’ own affairs were never discovered. He had a lifetime of careful secrecy to prepare him, after all.

On occasion, they made love, though haltingly and often unsuccessfully. Miranda would describe a lover’s caresses to him until he was aching and ready, she would take him and be taken until that need had waned.

Miranda’s outspoken mind and clearly intelligent conversation grated at Alfred Hamilton’s nerves and temper. They never got on, despite Thomas’ mother approving heartily of the new lust for life in the family.

Ten years was a long time to not have children, however. When it was stated emphatically by a doctor that Miranda was barren, she wept for days. Thomas’ mother tried to comfort her but her failing health rendered her housebound after some time. Thomas held his wife, kissed her, tried in vain to understand her grief but she loved him nonetheless. She spent time with her friend’s children and cared for them as dutifully as though they were her own, though the ache of it never truly went away. Some wounds are not healed by time but only turned to scars that ached on cold days.

Then, on an overcast day in spring, their world was forever changed.

Miranda saw the change in her husband immediately. There was a spring in his step and a glint in his eye she knew from the particularly intriguing books he would read (some of them not precisely welcome in the country). She kissed his cheek and took him to the study, sat him at his desk and prodded him until he spilt forth the encounter that had put him so oddly at ease.

“The new liaison,” he began, “son of a carpenter’s mate and a Lieutenant in the Navy, from no high-born family and entirely self-made… He is- he is remarkable. I daresay you will enjoy his company even more than I!” He took her hands and kissed the back of each, his lips lingering in a way they rarely did.

She saw the glimmer of something soft in his eyes and felt a pang in her chest. Not jealousy, perhaps, but something akin to sympathy. She, at least, could take lovers with only a little fear - her life was not at stake.

“You already seem rather taken, perhaps I should keep my distance if he is this unbalancing?”

Thomas laughed and shook his head, lifted her hands to his lips again and pressed them to his cheeks like a happy child. “No, my dear, you must be introduced. I can’t keep this one to myself.”

He described the Lieutenant over dinner, the two of them dining in the more comfortable and less formal sitting room towards the back of the house. Thomas’ usually calm and collected way of speaking had become animated and wild. He gestured with his hands, giving details of the new liaison’s height, the breadth of his shoulders and the red of his hair, how his gait was long and sure-footed in the boots he wore.

“They reach his knees, Miranda,” Thomas exclaimed. “I daresay he looks like something from a novel. But there’s something new about him, something unpolished that I can’t put my finger on…”

Miranda laughed and pressed their knees together, her hand on his thigh. “And you’d like to put your finger on it, would you?”

The blush on his cheeks was entirely at odds with the hungry grin on his lips. “You’ll understand when you see him,” he said. The grin fell. “Though I can’t, not this time. Not with so much at stake.”

They finished their dinner and retired to bed. Though they had separate rooms and beds of their own, they often slept in the same bed simply for the comfort of another body. Thomas had nightmares, sometimes woke unable to move and seeing things that weren’t there, and Miranda had tricks to help him cope. He was also constantly warm to the touch and was wonderful to curl around in winter.

James McGraw was everything Thomas had promised and more. Though not exactly tall compared to the gangling limbs of her husband, he cut an impressive silhouette against the backdrop of the docks. The sun caught in his hair and Miranda was struck with the urge to brush the locks and braid them as her mother had done to her when she was younger. When he speaks, her gut tightens. The low and rolling timbre of his voice is like velvet caressing her skin and she wants him, is suddenly aware of how long it has been since she had last took a lover and she wondered how much Thomas must have ached to want and not be able to have.

And oh but he is polite - in his manner and his words, in his reluctance to meet her eye… She wants to pick him apart and see what he is really like when not so well buttoned.

Still, there was something dark and hidden in those clear green-blue eyes of his. He spoke sharply and kept his posture so rigid she thought he might snap if a stiff breeze blew. There were small scars on his hands from either hard work or hard fights - she wondered eagerly which caused them.

Thomas continued to pine over him, though gently and not as ardently as she had feared he would. The issue of Nassau loomed too large in his mind with the shadow of his father just behind it. James, and Thomas had insisted on the familiar in a way that made Miranda proud, was fiercely intelligent. He picked some of Thomas’ more radical ideas apart with brutal ease and directed him along more conventional paths. Miranda thought that was part of what attracted them both to the officer - he was just as smart, just as witty and quick as them, and he refused to be put into a corner even when amongst his “betters”.

“Well?” Thomas asked after a few weeks of meetings and brief lunches with the object of their mutual interest.

She hummed, plucking at a stray stitch and trying to figure out why needlework was so tiresome. Women were supposed to be good at this, with slender and nimble fingers… “Well, what?”

“Will you make an advance, or will I need to invite him to your chambers for you?” He said with a knowing smile.

“I’m going to drop by tomorrow morning and invite him to see the Grey’s collection. If all goes well, I might see something a little more interesting than drab paintings of Jessica’s great uncle.”

She did, at. And it shocked her just how much she enjoyed not only the touch of him but the gentle way he cared for both her reputation and her marriage. When James left, she traced the shape of a bruise on her thigh and sighed. Thomas was delighted for her when he returned, but was quiet at dinner and slept in his own bed. It was rare they ever became interested in the same person, and it hurt her to think Thomas was unhappy. She wanted nothing but the greatest happiness for her husband, she loved him after all. And he loved her.

Her affair with James was a well-kept secret everywhere but in the house. Whenever James was there on business with Thomas, he kept his back straight and his hands clasped behind him, his eyes faced forward as though any stray glance at Miranda would cause Thomas to challenge him to a dual.

Thomas gently admonished him. “You can look at her, James,” he said, touching James’ arm and stroking the thick coat with his thumb. He wanted to linger, wanted to gather James into his arms and have just a taste of what it would be like to be close to him. The blush that rose on James’ freckled cheeks didn’t help with the want, in fact, it only served to stoke the embers glowing hotly in his belly. “My wife is beautiful, and as such deserves admiration from any who lay eyes on her. Especially men who are as kind to her as you are.”

James flushed deeper, his lips curving into a smile so kissable that Thomas found himself staring. Miranda swept forward and forced herself into James’ eyeline. “Thomas, you’re teasing him!” She wound their arms together and pressed to his side. Thomas thought James might faint with all the blood rushing to his cheeks.

“My lord, my lady, I-” He swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat oh so distractingly, and flicked his eyes up to Thomas. A calm and decisive air settled over him. “I am out of practice being in amiable company, especially company that catches the eye so.”

Thomas’ own cheeks felt warm. He saw how Miranda’s lips curved and her eyes widened at the remark. It was undoubtedly directed at Thomas, how could it not be? Hope began to unfurl in his chest even as James’ attention moved to Miranda and he lifted her hand to press his lips to it.

In bed later, Miranda’s hair gathered in a braid over her shoulder and a bright red mark on her breast just below the neckline of her shift, Thomas could barely keep himself from laughing.

“Did you see him?” He asked, aghast and amazed. “Did you hear him, Miranda?”

She kissed his temple and drew him to her. “I did, love, and I am beside myself with happiness. Do you think he might-?”

Doubt settled over him. “No,” he said at once. “If circumstances were different, then maybe, but… not now, no.”

They lay quietly, Miranda against her husband’s chest and listening to his steady heartbeat.

“Are you happy?” He asked after a while.

Miranda sat up and met his gaze. “I’m the happiest I think I’ll ever be.”

He touched her cheek with warm fingers. “Good.”

When James stayed the night in Miranda’s chambers, she tried her best to keep their lovemaking discreet. It seemed to her that James found a thrill in the knowledge that Thomas was only yards away in his own bed, and she relished that knowledge and what it might mean for the three of them, even as the idea of it scared her. She would catch James looking at the door or the wall that connected her chambers to the rooms between them and Thomas’ own. He would bite his lip and groan heavily when she did anything less ladylike and more masculine in their bed.

The joy of the affair and the slow thawing of James’ attitude towards them was interrupted by an unexpected and unwanted guest.

Thomas grumbled and muttered to himself as he entered the small antechamber Miranda often secluded herself in for moments alone. Thomas only ever came in when he, too, needed an escape.

“Thomas?” She asked quietly, standing at once to see to why her husband seemed so… unlike himself. “Thomas, love, what is it?”

He looked down at her with bright wet eyes, cheeks flushed red with anger. “My father. He has decided he will be joining us for dinner. I suggest you spend the evening with James to avoid him, seeing as I can’t.”

She shook her head and gripped his hands firmly in her own. “I will take his barbed comments and sit by your side. We are a united front, Thomas; never forget that.”

Dinner was, as expected, an awful event. Miranda loathed every moment and wished she had taken Thomas’ advice - an evening spent alone in James’ bedchamber was a far more attractive concept than being called a whore in all but name by one’s father in law. But there was some business to discuss, and Thomas valued Miranda’s insight on such things.

Thomas’ fury settled when the beast of a man was out of the door and a brandy was put in his hand. The warmth of the liquid soothed his nerves to no end. He hummed in delight as Miranda perched on his knee and kissed his temple.

“You know, our dear Lieutenant will need to hear of this development at once. Should I call for a carriage to be sent?” She asked under her breath, a hand rubbing firmly between his shoulders. James often put a hand there, when he felt brave enough to touch the man he was, in a way, serving.

“Do you think it necessary? Pirates blockading a bay is something for the naval presence there to deal with, not us.”

“He is a tactician, Thomas, let him help. Your father all but said the situation was in dire need of better minds.”

He acquiesced and rang a small bell, telling Thompkins to send for the Lieutenant at once, with orders that he was to be fed when he arrived and no expense to be spared at his comfort.

When James arrived his cheeks were flushed and his eyes bright, questioning, clearly at a loss as to why he had been summoned. “My lord?” He asked, striding forward in those damned boots of his, hat tucked safely under his arm. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” Thomas started, “well… Yes, but not disastrously so. But it will wait a moment; I’ve taken the liberty of asking for a meal to be set out for you.”

James followed him obediently to the study where a plate had been set with a glass of deep red wine next to it. Watching James eat was always a confusingly beautiful experience - he ate as though he was restraining himself, as though his own hunger was unnatural and he had to confine himself to the smallest bites of each dish. Thomas combatted this by taking an apple and biting into it with a wide mouth, licking the juice from his lips and fingers with abandon, even as James watched him with a blush rising on his cheeks.

There was something there, something that tugged at Thomas’ heart and groin all at once. It was in the way James watched him at times, with parted lips and a curious glint in his eyes. It was also in the way he responded to the small flirtations Thomas offered; a hand brushing against his, a finger resting just too long on a map so it met his own, looking up at him through long lashes and smiling that half smile… He did all those things with Miranda, how were they different when aimed at Thomas?

For a while, they talked about New Providence Island, about the pirates and their thorny presence in the Bahamas. James set his stunningly sharp mind to the task at once and, with Thomas’ third-hand description of the battlefield, formulated what seemed to be an unbeatable strategy. He wrote it down and a servant took it straight to Admiral Hennessey’s quarters in Whitehall.

Miranda came in and kissed her husband’s cheek while offering a top up of wine which neither man cried off. James watched as Thomas kissed his wife more fully, an act he did seldom but knew she relished. His eyes fixed on their lips and Thomas’ hand at his wife’s neck. When she went to kiss James, a little more forcefully and a little deeper, Thomas took his own time to watch. James’ cheeks went pink and his eyes fluttered shut, he lifted his face to her and leaned into the kiss as best as he could from his seat. Miranda pulled away looking like the cat who had caught the canary.

“Not too late, boys, I may have need of you later,” she said with a rough voice, her lips as red as light filtering through wine.

James choked a little and straightened in his seat even as Thomas laughed and waved his wife from the room. “Begone, temptress! I shan’t leave him too sated to be of use to you,” he responded, his head heavy with wine and brandy and a full belly. He saw James bite his lip just as Miranda shut the door.

“This is all very… unconventional,” James uttered after a moments silence. “I’ve never- that is, I’ve never been the other man before.”

Thomas leaned on one elbow, his chin in his hand, gazing across at James’ perplexed but relaxed expression. “Is that how you see this? As myself and her, then you and her, separately?”

James nodded.

“Did it occur to you that I, too, get something from this arrangement?” He asked. Courage filled his veins like bright amber.

“My lord, I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

He smiled and reached forward, took James’ hand and tapped his finger to each of the knuckles. “You help me with my political schemes, yes. And you are in a relationship with my wife, that is also true. Tell me… Has Miranda ever mentioned to you the nature of our marriage?”

James shook his head, his hand warm and his fingers spread beneath Thomas’.

“We love each other very much. I would, if asked, challenge God himself to her hand if necessary. I know she loves you, too, and that you love her. I feel no jealousy for that, only that I don’t have the same net of love encompassing me. Miranda and I are partners above all else, we are not lovers, but you and I are partners too.”

James scoffed and looked away, his eyes darting to the door. He took his hand from the table and put it in his lap to clasp the other. “My lord, I don’t think it compares at all-”

Thomas frowned, his good humour fluttering to the floor. He held his own hand and pressed a finger to his lips. “No… It cannot compare. But that doesn’t make it lesser;” he sighed, pictured Miranda when they were younger and he still harboured his own sense of shame and self-loathing. “You put far too much weight on the comparison of yourself with others, both in work and leisure. Try to see yourself how Miranda sees you, how I see you.”

“How you-?”

The confused look on James’ face ripped into him and icy cold fear flooded him. “But it is late. I can’t keep you if you do not wish to be kept. I’ll retire and let you find comfort upstairs.”

He went to the door, ringing the bell as he went, and spared James one last look. “Goodnight, James. Think about what I said.”

The next he heard, James was with Miranda in her rooms, the rhythmic sound of their lovemaking more noticeable that evening than any other.

And if Thomas spent in his own hand, imagining what he might have had with James? No one would know but him.

—

The next three weeks were a haze of work and dinners, of hasty glances and questioning looks. Miranda tried to keep her thoughts to herself during that time. Her interference would only raise Thomas’ hackles and frighten James into hiding. Instead, she offered an ear to Thomas, a shoulder to cry on as he tried in vain to temper his feelings. He had steadily fallen in love with James, something she could not fault him on given her own feelings for the man. But the fact it was love, not some idle fancy, made it all the more dangerous.

She feared for him, feared what the world would think, what his father might do if he ever knew… If it came to that, she would shoot the man herself.

But it all came to a head without her even realising. The only sign was the dawning need and serenity filling Thomas’ expression even as tears filled James’ eyes and his voice cracked with repressed emotion.

Her heart cracked when they kissed. If Thomas had been able to see anything but James at that moment, he might have mistaken it for jealousy or heartbreak, might have thought he was taking James away from her. But it wasn’t that - she was terrified. Now it was real there were more dangers to face, more pitchforks and torches waiting in the darkness for them to let their guard down.

Her fears lessened as James and Thomas fell deeper in love. Their love and affection for her never waned, and James spent as much time with her as he ever had, sometimes at Thomas’ behest when he felt she was being ignored. They made love in pairs and, on a few startling and memorable occasions, as a threesome. Miranda had never known pleasure like it. The look of love and happiness on her husband and lover’s faces as they came together, as they touched one another and her, as she touched them… It was unparalleled and she never wanted it to end.

A week in the country estate in Derbyshire offered them a glimpse into the life they could lead when the issue of Nassau was dealt with. Privacy, James sleeping peacefully between them and waking them with kisses, late nights spent talking and kissing and laughing followed by mornings spent sharing tea and bread and butter. Thomas spent an afternoon painting as she and James swam in the lake.

The finished piece was clumsy but no less beautiful - bright colours and sharp lines, the muted blue-green of the lake broken only by two frolicking figures, one with dark hair and one with bright red. James looked at it with a fragile wonder before kissing Thomas until they were both breathless.

But London called. It beckoned with a gruesome clarity, breaking through the gentle haze of their new love and crashing into them like the tide. It was inevitable that things would change when Nassau loomed over them again. Thomas grew restless as they got closer, his fingers tapping against his lips and fiddling with his rings more and more with each mile. James tried to comfort him by offering his hand to hold and kissing lightly at Thomas’ jaw. Miranda watched with a strange sense of foreboding as the men across from her in the carriage held onto the fading hues of their affair, both in fear of it being shattered and stained by the wider world.

“James,” she said to him as Thomas directed servants to take their bags into the house. “Promise me something.”

James smiled at her. It didn’t reach his eyes. Perhaps the sense of doom had fallen over them all. “Anything.”

“Don’t for one moment think that this isn’t real, that what we feel for one another isn’t real.”

They went into the house and went to bed earlier than usual, James under the pretence he would be in a separate room but soon finding his way to Thomas’ when the house had gone silent.

He received news a few days later that he was to go to Nassau, to gain intelligence and survey the situation as well as find out if it was possible to subdue the place. Thomas was beside himself at the idea, both out of a need to know and to succeed, but also out of a need to keep James close and love him as fiercely and protectively as he could.

It was only three months, they reminded themselves. What were three months to lovers committed to one another as deeply as they?


End file.
